Another attempt at a quick paste response to "I want something with good night vision"

Best color night vision is Hikvision's ColorVu G2s. If you want IR night vision there are more options. I prefer Dahua or JideTech myself but many use the same larger sensors. For IR get the largest sensor you can. 1/1.8 (like Dahua IPC-HFW4631H-ZSA) of better if you can. Forget about stated LED ranges since you will want to turn those off anyway unless you like attaching bugs to your cams. Use seperate lighting like accent lights or IR floods mounted away from the cams.

Plus of course match the specs to the distance and view angle you need. But keep in mind most fixed focus cams are focused for 10-30 feet, depending on model, so for over 50 feet plan on something you can focus for the target range either motorized (usually zoom models only) or manually. Don't assume fixed model are easily adjusted as most are glued in place these days.

What ever you get make sure they support ONVIF or at least RTSP so you can mix brands as needed.

To dig deeper look at https://securitycam101.rmrr42.com/2020/05/getting-cam-specs-easy-way.html for info about how to use an online GUI tool tha lets you set up virtual cams on your site to get an idea of what diff models will be able to see.

Simple copy paste reply for "what cam / system should I get?" posts.

People seem to not read the links so I've made this reply to copy paste in.

The probs with asking for info like this are that setups can be VERY subjective as to what is good enough and you mostly get I like or hate X for replies even if you have specs for what you need.

First thing you need to think about is what is it you expect to see. For cameras there are DORI (Detection, Observation, Recognition, Identification) numbers that tell you at how many feet you can expect what level of detail you can see. So pick a level, Detection, Observation, Recognition or Identification that you can live with first or you are just wasting your time and money. If you really have no idea then stop here and get something cheap like a Blink Mini to get a feel for what you can and can not see.

Before looking at brands sort the number cams and specs each needs to be to see that level of detail at the distance each camera is expected to monitor. Here are instructions for a free online tool that lets you virtually add cams to your site and play with specs to see coverage and expected results. https://securitycam101.rmrr42.com/2020/05/getting-cam-specs-easy-way.html
Then you can make a plan for what you will need and not end up tossing stuff for upgrades.Remember you do not need to do it all cameras, lights and sensors at once so this can also help prioritize the order to add things. 
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Avoid WiFi wherever you can. Since you need to get power out there anyway you should look at Ethernet Over Power adapters where running Ethernet cable is not practical.
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That said the $100-200 per cam range seems to be the sweet spot for bang for the buck. Though as I've said some will be fine with cheaper and others will not consider any cam under $1K. So sorting what works for you is key. My "go tos" if you have a bit of light and your target is under 50 feet max are ColorVus. For further I like Dahua varifocals (zooms). But I have a dozen brands, much less models in use.
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As far as a NVR you will want to make a list of features you want and then see which of the ones that has those looks easiest for you to work with. Personally I like Blue Iris. Mainly because it is so easy to interface with things like home automation and AI systems. Plus relatively simple to upgrade a PC to well beyond the limits of a standalone NVRs. But for example if you wanted camera and radar linkage you might be better off with a Dahua setup. Of course we are talking serious money there. Either way leave room to grow as odds are you will want to add to your system.
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Even if you have the bandwidth for recording to the cloud I would only plan on it as a backup. The ultimate setup would be recording 24/7 to a SD card in the cam and a local NVR then backing up alerts to the cloud. As a rule being able to record 24/7 means no battery powered cams.

Lastly think about supplemental lighting like accent lighting and or IR floods as in camera lights tend to draw bugs and spiders. You will want to place these extra lights off axis from the cam to avoid glare issues too.

Buying a camera is kind of like buying an outfit

I've tried to make the point so many times that you need to match the cam to the thing you want to monitor with posts like Getting cam specs the easy way and Answer to: I just want a decent system but I found myself thinking this morning this analogy might finally get through.

How is buying a camera is kind of like buying an outfit?

I'm definitely NOT into fashion 

But that is really my first point. The importance of how an outfit makes you look varies a lot between people. Some want to be dressed to the nines and others are good with thread bare and holes or even an birthday suit. In the same same way with cams some may want to ID passers by while others are cool to just know something is right outside the door. And just cause something is labeled one size fits all does not mean they actually fit all, much less that most would be happy with the fit. 

Also odds are no one has your same style requirements so when asking for advice, gather data not shopping lists. You do not want to find out something you assumed is actually not and have to toss it or make due till you can afford to replace it.

BTW Personally I'm the t-shirt and jeans type and I also tend to go for cams in $50 to $150 range. Nothing fancy but I expect a fair bit for my money too. I'll use a $25 Wyze cam to monitor a mouse trap, a gauge, a closet or maybe even a larger area like a storage room temporarily for example but not my yard.

Think of resolution like size. 

While most could probably wear a "large" size shirt, to get the look you want probably means getting a shirt size that matches your body size. As with clothes, the size might not be quite the same fit across brands but it is a good starting point. And if you do not know your size, guessing larger is usually the safer bet. Also one of the most important factors to consider. Though some of the below might alter what is the best fit. Especially view angle.

View angle is like length / type.

For instance will shorts, long pants or even a skirt / kilt / robe work best for the result you are looking for? The view angle too needs to fit what you want to cover (or not), may need to be changeable (zoom) and will probably be a compromise. See Focus options are kind of like feel / comfort. Resolution and view angle along with distance to target give you the pixels per inch at target which is the most important spec if you want to be able to pull a recognizable face or plate from your video. Can I get that in English you ask? I'll do you one better. Here are step be step instructions on how to use a web based tool to sort out what resolution and view angle you need to get detail you want at a distance. Even better the tool lets you stick cameras on a Google map of your site and drag the target and view width. Could it really get any simpler?

PTZ is like layers.

Layers give you weather options but may mean you are carrying a lot of extra clothes around all day or running back forth to storage. In a similar way Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) cams are great for looking around but generally not a good a way to reduce the number of cams you need or save money. Forget "smart tracking" unless you are talking a multicam linked system costing a TON and installed by pros. Even then you are talking coverage with fixed cams telling PTZs where to zoom in for close ups. And each PTZ can only track one object (hopefully a person) at a time. So you factor your ROI there.

That said I find getting an indoor cam to avert its eyes under certain conditions is kind of cool. From the number of people I've seen asking how to do it, a fair number must feel the same. Granted using a fixed cam with a smart plug might be simpler but I had the spare cam and like I said, it is kind of cool. I also have Wyze PTL sitting in my to-do pile with a remote control truck for doing things like inspecting the crawl space under the shop. Point is there are reasons for having one. Just make sure your reason will actually yield the results you want.

Lighting is like style.

Are you going camping, partying or to a meeting? In the same way the lighting required / options should match. If you have a bit of light on the target area to work with there are some incredible color at night options now. Seriously you will probably not believe the videos are real. But they only work to a point and have no IR (night vision) back up option so you might need to go with an IR camera instead or in parallel and possibly even IR floods to see what you want at night. Accent lights are an option to still go with the color at night cams if you are OK with that. Sometimes you will prefer no visible light and IR will do that for you. Note IR LEDs are going to show and will give away their location. One side note here is to think about glare. For instance a light bright enough to light up and area 100 feet away is also going to make a bug near the cam flare like the sun at the right angle. And will draw bugs as well which is another reason to think about not using a light or IR source near the cam much less built into one. And a good reason to pay a bit more for better low light performance to reduce the supplemental lighting needed.

Focus options are kind of like feel / comfort.

You can go with the soft track suit (fixed focus). Or you can try and really look sharp at a high cost in time and money. Same is true with cams. You probably know enhance like in so many shows and movies is not a real thing no matter what rez your cams are. Though I am seeing a lot of people asking about 4K cams despite the fact that they often yield lower quality video with a larger resource hit for what the person is trying to monitor. 

What you might not know about is depth of field much less how narrow it can be on some cameras. Especially indoor models. Auto focus or manually focusable, especially coupled the exact amount of zoom you want, might make a huge diff in the detail you can see. But of course there are always trade offs like look vs feel of an outfit. Note too the speed a camera can focus can vary a lot. For instance a Dahua 6 MP OEM is often with $10 of a Reolink 5 MP 511. But not only does Dahua have higher resolution and better low light performance but the zoom and focus speeds blow the Reolink away.

Do you need say something?

Does your outfit need to make a statement? Rich, Goth, nerd ect.? Maybe even have an actual statement on it like many of my t-shirts? Or the ultimate, with scrolling and or audio responding full color LEDs? (Yes this a thing.)

In the same way you might want your camera to record audio or even have 2 way audio so you can talk back. Though in my experience you should keep your expectations low here. Especially outdoors where wind noise seems to be huge issue.

How durable do you need?

While you could wear a silk shirt camping for example it probably is not the best option. So to if you are looking to go outdoors, you probably want a cam made for outdoors. And if it is going to be exposed directly to rain you will want an IP67 rating. Granted you can probably get away with less. At least for a time. You have to decide if you are comfortable with the risk.

WiFi is like going barefoot and battery powered is like going commando.

Yes there might be times when you might want to but as a rule not the best options. 

FYI I always put a smart plug on WiFi cams so you can reboot them when they drop off line. Despite having better network equipment than a lot small businesses, WiFi cams always seem to drop out from time to time. They usually recover before too long but not always. Granted you might not notice if you were not watching them all the time or reviewing their footage. Sometimes they just go to really slow frame rates without timing out, so you might not notice till you are looking back through the video a frame at a time or just happen to notice something suddenly appear or disappear. As you might expect, Wyze cams seem to have the worst WiFi. Shortest range and the most drop outs.

Features are like pockets and such

You might want loads of pockets like cargo pants with a Scotty Vest. You might prefer none at all or buttons over zippers. Point is while some features like in cam plate recognition or auto focus to faces might not be total deal breakers, they probably will (or at least should) factor into your final choices, so make a note of them when gathering specs and comparing prices. A small diff in price might net a big diff in video. For instance the above mentioned 6 MP Dahua and the ~$10 cheaper 5 MP Reolink. Not only is the Dahua higher rez but you can set the exposure based on time of day to utilize its better low light performance while the Reolink has no option to change the exposure setting.

Brands are brands

After all that it is good to note brands are brands. The brand speaks to the quality / reliability of the item a lot more than the fit. Though one brand may have more options matching what you are looking for than another. Especially as price is usually a factor too. As with an outfit, the brand is probably the last thing to look at unless you are more into promoting and or getting prestige from a brand than anything else.

Getting cam specs the easy way.

Goto IPVM

• Find your house
• stick a virtual cam on it
• Move the person icon to the middle of where you want focus
• pull in the sides of the triangle
• see what it says Distance and HFoV
• You can then play with resolutions to get a basic idea of the detail you would see if a person was standing at that location.
• You now have the spec you need for that cam.
• Repeat till you have everything you want covered, covered.

What you end up looks something like this (totally random house in Australia)

Now granted you will probably need to round those to standard value or plan on getting zoomables to get the view angles you want. 

Note too if a cam just says view angle instead of horizontal view angle it probably means diagonal which is a bit larger.

Answer: I'm having trouble with my WiFi security camera and need help/advice.

WiFi cams are just not reliable. Anyone that tells you diff is just not monitoring them that close. I work from home and have 4 dedicated monitors plus automation monitoring my systems which makes it painfully clear to me when a camera (and a lot of other devices) are having an issue.

But maybe they / you don't really care. Maybe you just want something simple that works most of the time. That is a legit opinion too. Not everyone wants much less needs solid coverage but if you do, read on. 

Better WiFi might help but not solve it

It is important to note it is not just WiFi strength. My level WiFi coverage of 10 AP is extreme for the few acres I'm covering but to align all my cams I need solid WiFi for my tablets over a good bit of my property plus I have a fair number of non cam devices that require WiFi like weather monitoring, irrigation and even some remote smart plugs and lights where Z-wave and ZigBee are not practical.

Note there actually 3 more APs besides the 10 shown here. An Ethernet Over Power at the gate and another at the creek side plus one on a separate test network

Then there is interference 

With interference on the rise from neighbors WiFi and other devices, multiple APs are becoming common and pretty much guarantees at least a few dropped frames from lost packets. Even out here on the edge of town. Here is an example of some of the APs in my logs of neighboring APs from just just one day of the cars passing by over 200 feet from the nearest AP of mine.

Some cams will stick to a channel or an even an AP till restarted. 

From my personal experience with multiple models of cams from over a dozen brands, if, for one of a multitude of reasons, they lose connection for a second they might:

• Wait for THAT AP to be reachable again. 
• Switch to the nearest AP on that channel even if the signal is too weak to be usable. You can work around this one a bit if your network supports min RSSI.
• Not even notice the disconnect for X amount of time
• I've even seen the occasional reboot though it is hard to say which was the cause and which the effect there.

Rarely is it anything close to a quick automatic reconnect.

But does it matter?

Granted in most cases we are just talking a few short outages which you might never notice if you you were not sitting in front of the consoles or checking the footage. Note too that depending on your NVR software and settings WiFi issues, might manifest as low frame rate or hung video for awhile before disconnects get long enough to get an offline indication on a console much less a notification. A few dropped frames may not seem like a big deal but if you are trying to get a usable shot of a face or plate it could mean everything.

The WiFi range of cameras varies wildly too. 

Off the same AP and the same time I've have had WiFi cameras "work" 200 feet away while others could not connect 50 feet down the same line of sight. The Wyze cams are so bad about dropping offline I have scripts for repower them via smart plugs if they are offline more than a couple minutes.

But if you really must

Sometimes WiFi really is the only practical option but if you are talking security find some way to use a wired cam even if it means Ethernet Over Power or point to point wireless. If WiFi is your only option I strongly recommend putting them on smart plugs and setting up scripts to restart them as needed.

Plus this

Then there is the whole other discussion on recording 24/7 vs on motion much less only to the cloud when the camera having the issue is battery powered and or recording to the cloud such as Ring, Nest, Wyze, Arlo ect.

What size PC do I need for Blue Iris?

I would always suggest you get the fastest CPU and GPU you can afford with enough hard disk space to save about a week's worth of 24/7 video (you should always record 24/7). To figure the HD space is not that hard. Just use this tool. It will also tell you how much bandwidth you would need to get to the NVR or cloud storage.

You should also look at Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage to get the most out of the hardware you have.

But if you are trying to sort the minimum CPU and GPU you can get away with or trying to justify the cost of an upgrade I should note it is almost impossible to get a definitive improvement number of X setup over Y unless you have both running side my side looking at the same cams. Things like the amount of motion the cams are seeing, overlays and other features in use factor in too. However this page Blue Iris Performance Statistics has a sortable and filterable table of config and load data collected from around 1400 user servers. 

On IP cam talk there is Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris though it recommends 6th gen and older though I'd say 8th gen is probably the best bang for the buck since it has 12 threads instead of 8 and the cost diff is often  less than $100. Plus you are talking a lot newer hardware so it will probably be working longer. See update below about a 10th gen I found on Prime day for an 8th gen price.

But that still just gets you in the ballpark.

For instance I have this i7-4790 I bought used almost 5 years ago now with 10 outdoor cams  that was running 50-60% CPU when I looked at it the other day when it was relatively calm. Today it looks like this, maxing out about 72%

Iris2 load and config

I built a i7-8700 with those same 10 cams to replace the 4790 PC. Even after adding another 6MP cam it was running 20-30% CPU during the same period as the above. Today it is maxing about 21%

Iris6 load and config

While both have the same configs for the cams in common but even without the extra cam that is not definitive for the CPU because the newer machine also has a better GPU (730 vs 1050), twice the RAM and is running BI5 instead of 4. Though the newer system actually appears to be using the GPU where the older one does not.  (The 730 does not appear to be supported for much.) Below are my other 3 servers to give an idea how motion, CPU and GPU factor in. All use an SSD for the Blue Iris DB and close to the same HDs for recording so the storage should not be much of a factor between setups. Note you can look at the motion column in the cam listings to get an idea of the amount of motion each cam relative to others on that server is seeing though the numbers are not relative between servers / consoles since the counts all start at server reboot. Also in almost all cases other than cam 93 the ones showing NoSignal counts are WiFi cams.

This one is close to max with 9 outdoor and 3 indoor cams on it.

Iris3 load and config

This one pretty maxed at 15 outdoor cams on it. Note I noticed the next day, after rebooting for updates, it was using the GPU pretty heavy. Similar CPU load though.

Iris5 load and config

And just to show the diff motion can make, this one with 23 active and 1 offline indoor cams that could handle a few more.

Iris4 load and config.

Update time to shuffle cams again. Having 27 indoor cams pushing almost 1000 MP/s is maxing Iris4

Update 7/5/2021:

Wow you wonder how much diff an upgrade can make. I got a PC with a 10th Gen Intel Core i7-10700 8-Core Processor running at 2.8Ghz with just the onboard Intel 630 graphics to start with on Prime Day. Cost less than the last 8th gen i7 I bought with half the RAM. Installed latest BI 5.

It is replacing 6th gen i7 4-Core at 3.4Ghz with a Geforce 730 running BI 4 (Iris 4 above) with a bit more optimization and less cams from previous tests. 

CPU Benchmark compare

Same RAM and SSD C drive with spinning for storage. 

I imported settings from the old to the new so they are identical and running side by side processing exactly the same streams from 22 active indoor cams.

Old system 13 to 34% CPU for Blue Iris

New system 3 to 4%!

Note the % reported by BI is lower than Task Manager by around 3% on both.

Iris7 load picture

I should be able to pull the other indoor cams back onto this server and even run DeepStack on it without maxing it out.

Here is shot with all the indoor cams back on the server. Though the Wyze cams are getting almost impossible to keep online these days. I'm going to have to replace them all.

Iris 7 load picture with all indoor cams on it

Almost 1100 MP/s and peaking at around 14% load. Note I could be running DeepStack on here as well but I went with onw DeepStack on my main Linux server for all 5 BI servers to only have one to easily monitor.

Answer to: I just want a decent system

The problem

Decent is pretty subjective. Kind of like asking what is the best way to get to work. You'll get answers from ride a bike to only a Karlmann King will get you there. Not only is it subjective relative to what they need and can afford it is subjective relative what they have actually tried model wise and using the resulting video. As one installer put it "I have to explain to my clients that if you have only ever ridden a horse and someone gives you a small compact car, you are gonna think it's awesome purely because you don't know you can get a Range Rover or a Truck for the same money."

But you still just want something for outdoors

If you just want to get 4 outdoor cams to cover the yard around your rectangular house you could start with this 4 4MP cam bundle from Reolink though I think it was like $50 cheaper last week. Still $341 is not bad to get you started. You can reuse the cams later with about any NVR. They are pretty decent for the money. And the NVR is speced for 8 cams so will probably cover you unless you need more features or go nuts buying cams like me. (60 cams as of this writing on 4 servers) Note though you might have a time getting non Reolink cams to work with it.

Better yet if you have a PC not doing much,  get the Reolink RLC-420 cams and a copy of Blue Iris. Note however Blue Iris 5 seems to have developed issues with some cams (including Reolinks) that Blue Iris 4 does not have.

But you still just want something for indoors

Now if you are looking indoors and wireless get some Wyze cams. Pretty much a toss if you want to upgrade later but you are talking about $100 for 4 plus some SD card you can probably reuse if need be. And they come in handy for monitoring things where you want a temp setup or need to get something in place quick. But you read this about the issues with wireless.

On the other hand a bit of research could save you time and money 

The above setups will help you get a feel for the low end. But if you want to do the research up front to get the most bang for your buck you can start reading my post "What is the best camera for X?" to sort what specs you need to be looking for the match what you want to monitor.

What is the best camera for X?

I see that question posted a lot. Often just "What is the best camera?".

Answer

It really depends on what you are monitoring and the features you need to do that. If you are just looking for a motion alert about anything will do. Note outdoors that will likely include things waving in the breeze or reducing the sensitivity and or marking to the point you miss a lot. But if you actually want to be able to have video usable by the police or (even more usual in my case) see what caused some damage and find how it got there to do it or where some critter is hiding, you need to have the right equipment in place before it happens. And that takes some thought. Preferable leaning to the overkill side given lenses get dirty and odds are you will not think of everything that will happen that you will want footage of after it does.

Once you start looking you find WAY too many posts and even news reports where someone only discovers the video they have is basically worthless after something has happened. Then as mentioned at the start I see almost daily posts just in one Facebook group alone, much less other groups from people asking which camera or even camera / NVR bundle is best with little of no mention of what they are trying to monitor. There seems to be a common myth that there is a best best cam that is also best in every situation. Better it do a bit of planning up front for the best match to your situation and get the footage you want latter. Even then you will probably want to add or upgrade cams once you see what you get. Especially the way prices are dropping per megapixel.

Think of it like buying TV(s). If you are cool with watching TV on a phone then the stream quality does not matter much. If instead you are coming from a 25 inch analog TV to a 40 inch 720p looks awesome but a get you see 1080p you will never go back. Though 4K is probably overkill till you are ready for a larger screen as well. But for TVs HDR (kind of analogous to color low light sensitivity in cams) is probably more significant to most than 4K. Though to get HDR you generally need to buy a higher end 4K TV.

Things to take into account:

• Need audio recorded?
• Do you need to be able to talk back?
• Distance to main target area? Might you need autofocus? Most fixed focus cams the lenses are glued in place. By design indoor and doorbell cams tend to be focused for close targets. Outdoor ones do better with targets in the 20-40 foot range. If you need both then you need autofocus. Look at this for a quick compare between fixed and autofocus.
• What level of recognition are you looking to get? Motion, face or plate at 3 feet or 200?
• Wide, average or narrow view angle?
• Is a wired ethernet possible there?
• Is power available there?
• Is night vision required and if so to what distance?
• Do you want color in low light?
• How weather / theft proof is needed?
• Is zoom wanted? If so auto or manual?
• Is pan / tilt wanted, if so should it track objects automatically?
• Are you going to use a DVR? If so do you have one or are you looking?
• If thinking cloud recording do you have the upload bandwidth for the number of cams you want? 
• What length of storage are you expecting?
• Do you want continuous recording (the answer to this one ought to be yes somewhere if only on the camera or DVR.) 
• Want cams to talk to home automation and/or be triggered by sensors?
• If you are thinking of only recording on motion or trying to reduce your number of cams with tracking you might want to look at this video for an example of why that is a bad idea.

If you are looking for some examples of what actual footage from several models of cameras look like check out my playlist of security camera examples.

Use the above to figure out the minimum specs you need to get usable video.

This why I currently have online are a mixture of brands and models. See my compare sheet.

To find the best camera(s) you need first by gathering the answers to most of the above then ask that question again and or do a bit of research.

Again plan on wanting more once you know what you have been missing you can easily want to cover every inch. I started with a tower cam on a rotor so I could see what the dogs were barking at without having to go to the right window or maybe even outside to see. Even with all my cams I  still have spots I want to add cams.

This whole blog is me documenting what I learned from what I've tried, what worked and what didn't despite of or confirming other's claims. And hoping to spare others some of the pain.

Adding this which should be pinned to the top of every security cams group.

FIRST figure out the specs you need for each camera location THEN start looking at models. You might be OK with Wyze cams or need $10K worth of gear to do what you want. The important part of that is what YOU want. I currently have 61 cams online and I'm still adding and doing upgrades but that is me. I'm covering multiple buildings plus acreage and I have critter issues. Some are OK just seeing something is moving on their phone.

The basics for usable footage (not just motion detection):

• Any bundled system is just a starting point to learn on. 
• Read NVR specs with skepticism.  For example supports 16 cams might mean only recording on motion or recording 24/7 but with not motion detection or 16 lower rez cams than the ones it is bundled with comes with much less the max rez it says it supports.
• Any cam looks OK on a phone. The question is can you see the level of detail you want to see at the distance you want to see it by zooming in after the fact (assuming you are not monitoring your PTZ cams 24/7).
• Avoid analog, battery power and WiFi cams and recording only to the cloud where you can.
• Record 24/7 somewhere. This means no battery powered cams.
• 4K will not let you see farther. it is for getting more detail in the designed range. 
• An unmonitored PTZ cam can not reliably cover the same area multiple fixed cams can.
• Any cam that is not auto focus has a fixed range where objects are in focus. This is called depth of field. This range can be large or small depending on the camera design. Google it for more info. 
• Sample night vision shots mean little without knowing what external lighting might be affecting the result. Compare shots between cams taken at the same time of obviously the same view are the best.
• Put your cams and NVR on a UPS.
• Most of the people posting in groups only know the one thing they bought often with little or no research other than asking a vague question in a Facebook group. I would not call myself an expert even with all the stuff I've tried. This analogy an installer told me sums it up perfectly. "I have to explain to my clients that if you have only ever ridden a horse and someone gives you a small compact car, you are gonna think it's awesome purely because you don't know you can get a Range Rover or a Truck for the same money." Then there are the ones trying to sell you what they sell. They might not even be pros. You definitely need to take the source into account and factor in bias and scope of experience.

My original Facebook overview.

I get asked about this a fair bit so here is my HD security cam 101. 

First things first 

Do not bother with analog cams or anything less than 720p. The video is almost useless and they will cost as much or more than HD cams.

The 2 trickiest bits are getting power to it and getting it connected to your network.

You can find these 720p Escam QD300s for as little as $27 on Amazon if you wait long enough. Generally they are $35-$40. I prefer these Escam QD900s today. Above pic is from one. They are 1080p which really makes a difference. I’ve seen them as low as $43 used. Been trending around $55. If mounting on or near the house, run an Ethernet cable to them and you can power them off the Ethernet cable by using some cheap POE adapters. Note this will not work with 5 volt cameras but fine for these 12 volt models. Away from the house just use WiFi. Do NOT run unshielded Ethernet outside for more than a few feet or a storm may fry your network! You can pick up cables for analog video cameras pretty cheap. For some reason they are cheaper and longer than the power only cables. My creek cam is on about 200 feet cable run, which is about the limit and probably is hurting the image quality a bit at night. Unless you have enterprise class WiFi or a repeater, you are not going to go much farther anyway through trees anyway. Waterproof any connections / unused connectors with duct tape or sticking in a waterproof outlet box. Be sure and change ALL the default passwords, user and P2P! I generally like to set up cams so each cam is visible to another so if someone, or more often something, messes with it I know what happened to avoid it happening again. Note the affordable 2k cameras are just starting to come out so you might want to keep that in mind when planning purchases. Check out Amcrest IP3M-941W and Amcrest IP3M-943W (Note I have not tried one of these yet but have eval coming.) Also if you feel comfortable taking electronics a part you can swap the lenses out on those QD cameras to get up to a 4x zoom from a 16 mm lens. That will help keep you camera closer to the house and less noticed.

There are all kinds of recording options.

The cameras above come with info on their cloud based service and there are lots of others but I generally find them pricey and you can easily swap your internet connection. There are also some nice looking DVR boxes now but I prefer a PC running Blue Iris. If you are just doing a cam or two, about any old (unfortunately has to be Windows) PC will run it just fine. For instance a used PC if you do not have an old one laying around. A single i7 class PC (as low as $600 new) can handle about 18 720p cameras recording continuously. (You can have them only record when they see motion but I would not suggest it.) After running a few days see how much space your recordings take with your settings and get a second hard drive for it. Given you might not notice or hear about something you want to review the video for right away I general suggest keeping at least a week’s worth. 8 TB drives are available now at a decent price per gigabyte. Just saying. I generally go with Western Digital Red or Purple. Blue is a bit cheaper but had some of those fail on me in less than a year. Your mileage may vary. For more on WD colors click here.

From there it depends on how wild you want to get.

Blue Iris is pretty easy to get running and has a ton of stuff you can get fancy with if you want to take the time. Definitely start by setting it up so you can view on your phone. Then setting motion alerts based on something above at least certain size moving between (up to 8 odd shaped) areas of the picture. Motion detection is something you will just have to play with till you get the sensitivity and screen zones right. Once you do, you can have it alert you to odd behavior in a bunch of ways. For instance one of mine says "driveway" over speakers and uploads a pic to my cloud if it sees something moving on the driveway, with a rectangle drawn around the thing it saw. I have that camera aimed at the gate at the street and I've told it to ignore anything beyond the gate and be extra sensitive to any motion near the UPS box out there. (UPS seems scared to drive in my driveway and used to just leave stuff sitting by the gate or random spots in the yard so now there is a box for them near the gate.) It is SO nice while I'm working to only have to glance at a monitor to see what is in the driveway or what the dogs are barking at. Especially lately if I had to go outside to check on them every time they get stirred up I'd never get anything done. Add to that seeing the wildlife you might not even know had in your yard and you will probably be adding more cams than you ever thought you would want for security. FYI for those that do not know, check out 3 camels price watch You can set it to email you when an item on Amazon falls below a price you are willing to pay! Also shows you historical prices for an item so you know what is a good price and right time to buy. Can save you BIG money!